In recent years, as the Internet is used more commonly, the e-mail has been widely used. Though the e-mail terminal for producing, receiving the e-mail and the like were originally limited to the computer terminal, wide variety of terminals have been on their market such as the cellular phone, the personal digital assistant, i.e. PDA, and the like.
As means for electronically transmitting text information or image information, though the facsimile device has been widely used before popularization of the e-mail, it has been impossible to communicate between the e-mail terminal and the facsimile device due to some differences such as communication protocols and data formats.
However, recently, there have been other facsimile devices which accommodate an e-mail service provided by an ISP (Internet Service Provider) and the like. These facsimile devices read the image and send it to a facsimile server at the ISP along with an e-mail address of its destination. Then, the facsimile server at the ISP converts the received image data into an attachment file of the e-mail and sends it to the e-mail address of the e-mail terminal as the destination.
Conversely, the e-mail sent from the e-mail terminal to the facsimile device which accommodates the e-mail service is converted into a facsimile image at the facsimile server at the ISP, and then sent to the facsimile device which accommodates the e-mail service. When the facsimile device receives the e-mail, it may record the image data on a sheet of recording paper or display it at a display device, such as a LCD and the like, provided on the facsimile device.
Usage of the facsimile server and the facsimile device described above has enabled output of the text information included in the e-mail from the e-mail terminal onto the facsimile device. However, it has been impossible for the facsimile server and the facsimile device described above to send the information displayed at a “homepage” to the facsimile device from the e-mail terminal, which cannot be connected directly with a printer, in particular, such as the cellular phone, the personal digital assistant, and the like.
In this case, it has been necessary to use a personal computer and the like separately to display a desired homepage and send it by means of a facsimile modem, or to output the displayed image at the printer and read an output result at the facsimile device to send it.
However, in the above described manner, there has been a problem that it is not able to process the information only by the e-mail terminal itself, and in the case where the information is printed out and read at the facsimile to be sent, there also has been another problem that a quality of the image becomes degraded so that a detailed quality of the image, such as a map image, is difficult to read.
In addition, even in the case with the e-mail terminal which can be connected to the printer, such as some personal digital assistants, not only it is troublesome to connect the printer with it, but also it is difficult to use the printer when going out. So it has not been practical in terms of ease of use.